SEAN SIMMERS, The Patriot-News/2006Marisa Donati receives chemotherapy treatment at the Cancer Center at Paoli Hospital outside Philadelphia in 2006. Donati, a 1992 graduate of Susquehanna University, was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2001. Commenting on a state report that finds no link between cases of cancer among Susquehanna alumni and the environment at the school, Donati said: "It is still quite curious that there were so many of us. I guess I am relieved."

A state Department of Health investigation found no evidence that an unexpectedly high number of cancer cases among a group of recent Susquehanna University alumni was associated with the environment or attending the school.

The department, in a report to be released today, said it found 55 percent more cases of cancer than it expected among alumni who left the school during a 20-year period.

But, the report said, there has been no increase in cancer among permanent residents of Selinsgrove, an environmental investigation found the area to be safe, and the types of cancer most responsible for the high numbers among alumni either have known, non-environmental explanations or are not associated with toxic exposures in the environment.

The study was triggered by a March 2007 report in The Patriot-News that detailed cases of cancer among young university alumni, many of whom once lived in an off-campus area in Selinsgrove near a contaminated former mill site.

The department obtained an alumni file from the university that listed 13,097 names of people who left the school between 1985 and 2004. Based on cancer rates among the general population, the investigators expected to find slightly less than 67 cases of cancer.

The count, conducted using cancer registry data from six states, was 104 cases.

"Although the total number of cancers detected in the alumni cohort exceeded the expected number, there is no evidence that this results from an environmental exposure that occurred at the university or that is associated with university attendance," the report concluded. "The overwhelming preponderance of the evidence supports this conclusion."

Marisa Donati, 38, a Susquehanna graduate who is battling cancer, said: "It is still quite curious that there were so many of us. I guess I am relieved."

A university spokesman, Gerry Cohen, said the finding was "good news" for the school and its alumni.

"People have been intensely interested and concerned about this issue," he said. "We think people are going to be pretty relieved when they get our next correspondence."

University President L. Jay Lemons said the study gives the school "greater confidence and certainty than any other university in the nation about the safety of our environment."

"Thanks to the exhaustive work by two state agencies, we now know that nothing in the Selinsgrove environment is harming our students -- past or present," he said.

Jane Forgione, the mother of a graduate who died of testicular cancer at age 24, said the findings left her with a bad feeling.

Two cancers in particular -- malignant melanoma and testicular cancer -- were significantly more prevalent than expected among alumni. The state expected to find fewer than seven cases of testicular cancer, but found 14. It expected fewer than six cases of melanoma, but found 21.

"Now you see it is double among the alumni of the school," Forgione said of testicular cancer. "If he didn't go to that school, he could have had cancer, but we don't know that."

Stephen Ostroff, director of the state Health Department's Bureau of Epidemiology, said in an interview Thursday that the prevalence of melanoma has been increasing among young people. And he noted that the Susquehanna alumni group contained a higher percentage of Caucasians than the general population. Melanoma occurs more frequently among whites than in other races.

Testicular cancer is "one where the source is not readily known," Ostroff said. "It is not a cancer type that, overall, has been linked to an environmental source."

But Kathy Helzlsouer, an oncologist and cancer researcher who was quoted in the original newspaper report, said experts do not know enough to say whether or not the environment might cause testicular cancer.

Some of the other cancers found in the state study, she said, also were "rare" and researchers do not know enough about possible links to the environment.

"The absence of knowledge doesn't mean there is no association," she said.

Helzlsouer, who is director of the Prevention and Research Center at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, said the Pennsylvania Department of Health's investigation was difficult because of the mobile population -- the fact that students who attended the school during the years in question were scattered in many states.

"It is impressive that they did that, because it is hard," she said.

The newspaper report detailed how many alumni who died or suffered from cancer had once lived in or frequented an off-campus area near the former Rhoads Mills. A state-monitored environmental cleanup that occurred on the site in 2005 involved the removal and incineration of about 1,500 tons of contaminated soil.

SEAN SIMMERS, The Patriot-News/2007The "Warehouse" in Selingsgrove (center gray building) is still occupied mostly by Susquehanna University students. The bottom window is the room that Patrick Kadel, who died of cancer, had lived in. The building in the foreground is the last remaining of the Rhoads Mill area.

The contaminants included the carcinogen benzene. It had leaked from underground fuel tanks that had been removed about 15 years earlier.

In 2007, after the newspaper story was published, DEP conducted an intensive environmental analysis at the former mill site. It found nothing that posed a serious health risk and said there was no residual contamination that indicated a health risk had existed in the past.

At the same time, it required the former mill owner to deal with newly discovered herbicides and nitrates that were measured above state safety standards.

Cohen, the Susquehanna spokesman, noted that no cancer associated with benzene was prevalent among the alumni.

"We don't have an environmental explanation or link for these cancers, and that is how this whole thing started," he said.

He said cases of melanoma and testicular cancer are increasing in the general population. It is never good news when people are grieving, he said, but it is good news to know that their grief is not tied to time spent at the university.

"We have been the most-studied university, I think we can say with confidence, in the country," Cohen said.

Donati, who graduated from the university in 1992, was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 30. It later appeared in her liver, and -- after a period when Donati hoped its spread had been stopped -- appeared recently in her spine, skull, ribs and hips.

But Donati said Thursday she feels "great" because of a new type of chemotherapy and other treatments. She is working full-time and doing some traveling.

"As long as I can keep going," she said, "I am going to keep going."

THE STORY SO FAR

2002: Patrick Kadel and three other Susquehanna University alumni, all of whom lived in or frequented a small off-campus area in Selinsgrove, die of aggressive cancers. Kadel's mother, Linda Kadel, compiles a list of other alumni and residents who have cancer and pushes for a formal inquiry.

2003: A university administrator tells Kadel that a thorough investigation has uncovered nothing out of the ordinary. A pathologist consulted by the university says the cancers are most likely the result of chance.

March 2007:The Patriot-News publishes stories after its own eight-month investigation of the situation, including documenting a history of environmental contamination close to the area where the four students lived. The state Department of Environmental Protection launches a testing regimen of the soil, air and water around the site; the state Department of Health launches a separate investigation into cancer cases among young university alumni.

May 2007: The Department of Environmental Protection concludes the environment in Selinsgrove is safe.

January 2009: The Department of Health finds an unexpectedly large number of cancers among a large group of university alumni, but concludes there is no evidence the illnesses are related to the environment.

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